[And now for Part II of our series on Eastern (Czecho and Hungary… so actually Central?) European reform movements from a U.S. foreign policy context during the Cold War! Apologies again for the Roman numerals; OpenOffice does that automatically for some reason. It’s the second-to-last piece of my undergraduate career (looking forward to posting my senior thesis here… after it’s finally done). I guess I should do something about Poland ’89 after graduation and make a trilogy out of this!]
By the late 1960’s, the lines drawn between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe were static, and the hegemons at the head of either bloc had turned to expanding their influence and power in the third world where young, post-colonial states could be bought with arms and aid. The United States, under the Johnson administration, was mired in the Vietnam War; the Soviet Union, on the other hand, had just undergone a transition of leadership from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in 1964, and memories of Khrushchev’s heavy-handed brinksmanship, particularly in Cuba in 1962, led the new Politburo to toe a more moderate line.i By 1967, Soviet influence in the Middle East, where it had invested considerable energy and resources in building ties with the Arab states, was crumbling under the pressure of a strong Israel following its victory in the Six Day War.ii The United States, however, found itself in a similar situation of declining influence: by the waning years of the decade, there were over 500,000 American troops fighting in Vietnam, and domestic unrest in the United States over the war was at an all-time high.iii Add to the equation domestic economic issues in the U.S.S.R. and the deteriorating ties between the Soviets and the Chinese, which would result in a border war in March 1969 across the Ussuri River,iv and the two superpowers were all but ready to sit down at the negotiating table. A shock came to the Soviets in 1968, though, as their dominance of Eastern Europe was, as before in 1956 in Budapest, threatened by a reform movement in one of their satellites: Alexander Dubček’s so-called “Prague Spring,” a top-down reform movement of the communist system in Czechoslovakia, threatened the stability of the status quo in Europe. Dubček’s reforms, which resulted in press restrictions being lifted and culminated with rumors and talk of multi-party democracy, forced Brezhnev’s hand and triggered the Soviets into action. The ensuing Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and occupation, as well as the declaration of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” initially threw a wrench in the détente process: the outgoing Johnson administration had little to discuss, and the newly elected Nixon administration was reluctant to deal with the Soviets. Ultimately, however, the fallout from the invasion effectively forced the Soviets to sit down with the U.S., and a war-weary America was more than willing to oblige them.v The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was a defining moment in Soviet foreign policy and in the Soviet-American relationship in the 1960’s, and it set the stage for a major reduction in tensions in the following decade by giving the United States an edge at the negotiating table.
In the lead-up to 1968, the United States was plunged knee-deep in the Vietnam War. The war had been escalating consistently under President Johnson since 1964, when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively gave the president carte blanche to conduct the war as he saw fit. A military coup in South Vietnam in 1963, approved by the CIA and executed by a cabal of South Vietnamese officers mere weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination, allowed a military government with neither a long term strategy nor any working cohesion to come to power in place of Ngo Dinh Diem’s unpopular regime.vi This caused incredible weakness and instability in the South Vietnamese government, and forced the United States to make a much more devoted commitment to prevent its ally’s collapse: by the end of 1965, more than 184,000 American troops were on the ground in South Vietnam with more on the way.vii An arrogant American foreign policy, guided by the assumption that what Johnson’s administration accomplished in the Dominican Republic could be replicated in Southeast Asia, allowed the United States to ratchet up its involvement rapidly.viii Discontent and anti-war sentiments ballooned at home; morale plummeted among American troops and the American people. Until 1968, the administration asserted that victory was not only possible, but also right around the corner. Then, in January 1968, came the Tet Offensive: the resulting fallout caused the Americans to scale back their bombing campaign of the North and rethink their strategy. With discontent so high, President Johnson opted to not seek reelection, and he withdrew from the 1968 presidential race.ix American prestige was reeling.
The Soviet Union was in a similar situation: its humiliation in 1962 from Cuba had led Brezhnev to seek a massive rearmament program and military buildup, but his investment in the Arab states of the Middle East also expanded. The 1967 Six Day War, which was a resounding victory for the Israelis, did not sway the Soviet commitment to the Arab states: they desperately continued to pour money into Syria and Egypt to maintain some influence in the region, and as a result Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East was held hostage by radical Arab nationalists.x At the peak of the Six Day War, the Soviets sent Alexei Kosygin, a member of Brezhnev’s inner circle in the Politburo, to Glassboro, New Jersey to meet with President Johnson. The Americans were, at this time, ready for far-reaching talks to reduce tensions because of their involvement in Indochina, but Kosygin was not prepared for serious talks, especially since Moscow was in the process of building up its nuclear arsenal to reach parity with the United States.xi Coming events would see the Soviets much more eager to return to the table not long after the failed attempt to reach a consensus in Glassboro.
With the turmoil unfolding in the third world, Europe, as divided by the Iron Curtain, was relatively quiet. Since 1956, the order established in Europe had remained unchallenged by either side: the Eisenhower administration had learned the hard way what encouraging revolutionary sentiments in Eastern Europe would do to the Soviet Union’s temper. A storm was brewing in Europe’s heart, though, on the eastern frontier of NATO’s border with Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was a unique case in 20th century Europe: it was the last democratic state in Europe east of the Rhine river prior to the Second World War, and it was also the first nation sacrificed to appease Hitler’s appetite in 1938.xii After the war, it was the last Eastern European state to fall to Communism, where the democratic coalition government was forcibly overthrown in 1948 by a coup d’état, and a new constitution was drafted that solidified the dominance of the Communist Party.xiii Through the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the Czechoslovak Communists followed a similar trend as the other European Soviet satellites: they consolidated their power through suppressing dissent and dismantling the opposition through a series of show trials and police crackdowns. In contrast to the rest of the Eastern European satellites, though, the Czechoslovak political system was remarkably stable. Stalinism endured in Czechoslovakia well after Stalin’s death in 1953; the regime in Prague survived revolts in Berlin and Warsaw, as well as a revolution in Hungary, without wavering.xiv By the mid 1960’s, the Czechoslovak government had begun to loosen its grip. A growing desire for change among intellectuals reached a climax in June 1967 at the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers, and at student demonstrations in Prague in October of the same year.xv
The government acknowledged these calls for reform, and on January 5, 1968, Antonin Novotny resigned as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after fourteen years in that position.xvi He was replaced by Alexander Dubček, a relatively obscure Slovak politician who had risen to the leadership of the Slovak branch of the party. Novotny further resigned from the Presidency of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in March. In April 1968, “The Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia” was adopted at the plenary session of the Party’s Central Committee, and was titled “The Czechoslovak Road to Communism.” The Action Program broadly outlined proposed political and economic reforms, and placed an emphasis on the government’s desire to bring Czechoslovakia into the “scientific-technical revolution.” The Program featured a proposal for a complete overhaul of the Czechoslovak legal system, which for the first time since the 1948 coup would guarantee certain rights and safeguards for individuals within the criminal justice system.xvii The Action Program also promised to guarantee the rights to free speech and free press, which were unheard of east of the Iron Curtain. Overall, it shifted the focus away from the Party, which was mentioned briefly and vaguely, and instead concentrated on the state organs, particularly the National Assembly.xviii The Assembly was to become a veritable legislature, rather than a rubber stamp assembly, and it would play a large role in instituting the proposed reforms. From April to June, the government made preliminary steps towards implementing the Action Plan, but public opinion often made demands that went much further than the moderate reforms proposed.xix The Czechoslovak government, with the liberalization of the press, had essentially started rolling a boulder down a mountain: once it gained momentum, it would be very difficult to stop without a great amount of force.
The response in American foreign policy and intelligence circles was noticeably measured: the United States had been burned in 1956, and the lessons learned made them reluctant to rock the boat in 1968. A telegram from Washington to the U.S. embassy in Prague on February 13, before the Action Program was even published, indicated the policy direction that the United States would take:
Since political, social and economic situation in Czechoslovakia still very unclear and obviously in state of flux, believe our posture at moment should in general be one of responsiveness to positive Czech approaches without attempting to precipitate Czech action.xx
This attitude of cautious optimism was guided by the assumption that Dubček would seek a more independent foreign policy from the Soviet Union, which would necessitate warming relations with the West. A month later, on March 21, Walter Stoessel, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, met with Dr. Karel Duda, the Czechoslovak Ambassador to the United States. At this meeting, Ambassador Duda foreshadowed the Action Program that would be unveiled at the Central Committee Plenum on March 28, and briefly mentioned some anticipated reforms: he specifically mentioned that, despite the Vietnam conflict, the new leadership in Prague would, as expected, “wish to improve relations with the United States.”xxi The ambassador also brushed away concerns over intervention from the Soviets. A later telegram from Prague to Washington explicitly stated that they “hoped that lessons were learned on all sides from 1956,” and the embassy staff in Prague assured the State Department in Washington that they trusted the Czechoslovak government to remain cool, and to not undertake drastic changes that might provoke the ire of the Soviets.xxii
As the reforms progressed, Brezhnev watched them nervously. The free press and democratic reforms in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic were quickly becoming an existential threat to the Soviet Union’s hegemony over Eastern Europe; Brezhnev’s Politburo viewed the growing reform movement in Prague as a major challenge to the stability of Communism in the East, just as the Hungarian Revolution had been in 1956. The reforms in Prague were a revolution from the top-down, though, and there was no violence or strife: where the Hungarian Revolution was an explosion of popular passions, the Prague Spring was characterized more as an intellectual exercise driven by writers and students. Ambassador Duda had dismissed concerns of an intervention in his March meeting with Stoessel, but he had acknowledged that, in the event of strife or violence, an intervention would not be inconceivable.xxiii While there was no civil strife, and the divisions that existed within the Czechoslovak government between reformers and hardliners were relatively tame, it would not keep the Soviets from finding strife to “help” alleviate. By May there were already signals showing: reports from Poland and East Germany told of massive Soviet troop movements towards the Czechoslovak border on May 9, 1968.xxiv Prague publicly brushed this off as a military exercise that it had been alerted to beforehand, but the message from Moscow was received loud and clear around the world: shots had been fired across Prague’s bow. The U.S. government continued to keep a close eye on the situation, but it refrained from giving any real encouragement or assistance to the Czechoslovakians. A dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Moscow on July 11 described that Dubček’s government was coming under intense Soviet pressure to contain their “democratization” because of fears from Brezhnev that the Czechoslovak reforms could spill into not only the other Eastern European satellites, but also into the Soviet Union itself. Brezhnev publicly protested any interference in internal Czech affairs, but the embassy staff pointed out that a harsh media campaign by the Soviet government against Czechoslovak liberalization was in full swing.xxv A memorandum written on July 22 recorded a conversation between Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Deputy Under Secretary of State Charles E. Bohlen, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin. During their conversation, Ambassador Dobrynin insinuated that the U.S. was involving itself in the “Czech situation” in a NATO plot involving the CIA. Rusk denounced the accusations, and went on to say that “no one knew better” than the members of the Soviet Union’s diplomatic mission to the U.S. the restraint that the American government had exercised regarding the situation in Czechoslovakia. The report made special mention that Dobrynin appeared considerably worried, unlike his “usual genial self.”xxvi
Although the United States had firmly followed a wait-and-see strategy regarding Dubček’s reforms, Brezhnev was fearful that a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia would provoke NATO into a war in Europe, and he hoped to utilize political options to pressure Dubček to back down before it was too late. Brezhnev’s own allies in Poland and East Germany, Gomulka and Ulbricht respectively, pushed for an invasion because they feared instabilities in their own countries that might be triggered by Czechoslovak reforms. On the 26th and 27th of July, the Soviet Politburo set a provisional plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia with the understanding that negotiations would continue until they were exhausted. Their attempts failed, though, and on the 21st of August, 1968, the Kremlin gave the order: the Red Army, along with forces from other Warsaw Pact states (with the notable exception of Romania) were unleashed on Czechoslovakia.xxvii Still the 20th of August in Washington, an emergency meeting of the National Security Council was called at 10:15 p.m. to address the crisis: all around the table, the Soviets’ actions were met with surprise.xxviii President Johnson remarked that he called the meeting after being informed personally by Ambassador Dobrynin that the Soviet Union was intervening in Czechoslovakia “at the request of the Czechoslovak government.”xxix On the night of the invasion, the NSC, at the suggestion of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, decided to immediately summon the Soviet ambassador again to clarify the situation. President Johnson also decided to consult with NATO allies that night, and the next day the UN Security Council convened to discuss the invasion.xxx A statement released by President Johnson on the 21st condemned the “tragic news from Czechoslovakia,” and urged a Soviet pullout, but otherwise did not make demands nor urge the Czechoslovak people to action.xxxi Even at the peak of the crisis, the United States pursued a non-confrontational route for fear of provoking the Soviets to repeat the bloodbath that was Budapest.
The invasion was luckily, by comparison to Hungary in 1956, relatively bloodless. The invading Warsaw Pact armies did not meet armed resistance from Czechoslovak forces, who were ordered by the government not to resist.xxxii The citizenry were encouraged by their government to engage in passive and non-violent resistance. Aside from strong vocal opposition to Soviet aggression, the West was noticeably silent, whereas in Hungary they had goaded the revolutionaries to take to the streets with Molotov cocktails and submachine guns. There were some casualties, but they were mostly students gunned down by Soviet conscripts who had lost their nerve or were inexperienced with crowd control; Czech and Slovak blood spilled on the streets of Prague did unite the nation in hate, though, and the month long occupation was epitomized by the Soviet soldiers not receiving the warm welcome they had been promised by their superiors. Morale among the invading troops was low as the Czechs and Slovaks rejected them outright rather than welcoming them as liberators as had been expected.xxxiii The reaction in the West was just as careful and measured after the invasion as it had been before: apart from discussion at the United Nations, the U.S. government remained publicly more or less silent on the issue. It would be some time after the invasion that the Americans would reap the benefits of the corner that the Soviets had backed themselves into.
In the autumn following the invasion, the Soviet Union announced the Brezhnev Doctrine: Brezhnev declared in November 1968 that it was the right and duty of the Soviet Union to intervene in any state where the Marxist-Leninist system was imperiled by the threat of a new capitalist system taking over.xxxiv The invasion itself had, at least outwardly, appeared to be a resounding success: even American policymakers, specifically Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, were impressed by the efficiency and swiftness with which the Soviet military had secured Prague and the surrounding countryside, and they discussed how this indicated a rising Soviet military strength in Eastern Europe.xxxv The invasion was not a success, though; it was a massive gamble on the part of Moscow, and the Soviets would pay the price. The rising schism between China and the Soviet Union was exacerbated by the intervention, and it painfully strained the once monolithic force of world Communism that now appeared to be crumbling. Rising discontent in Romania and Yugoslavia against the Soviets also became more pronounced, and even on Red Square itself there was a historic protest against the invasion.xxxvi Brezhnev had hoped that the invasion would stifle the yearning in Eastern Europe for reform and democracy; while it did so forcefully, the spillover of liberal ideas from Czechoslovakia had, as he had feared, been even worse than from the revolutions in Poland and Hungary in 1956.xxxvii It was obvious to the Kremlin that these forces of dissidence were still at work under the surface, and that the invasion of Czechoslovakia could not possibly stamp it out completely. The Brezhnev Doctrine was a brave facade to portray the Soviet Union as strong and secure in its position in Eastern Europe, but the Soviet leadership was well aware of the reality of the price they would have to pay if they were forced to implement it again.xxxviii Considering the need to avoid further conflict, and the loss of Chinese support, the foreign policy directive of the Soviet Union in the 1970s was to avoid at all costs implementing the Brezhnev Doctrine again. This meant improving relations with the United States and NATO was imperative in order to avoid economic sanctions and instability in Europe; this meant détente could proceed.xxxix
As in 1956, the Soviet police action in Czechoslovakia came in the run-up to an American presidential election. The 1968 election was a landslide victory for Republican Richard Nixon, who was ushered into office on a wave of anti-Vietnam War fervor. Notably, Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice President at the time of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which put a special distaste in his mouth for the intervention in Czechoslovakia: in 1970, Nixon was reluctant to deal with Brezhnev with the fallout of 1968 in recent memory. His opportunity to make his move came before he took office, when in 1969 shots were fired across the Sino-Soviet border. In 1971, Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger traveled to China secretly; Nixon followed publicly in 1972.xl By opening relations with Beijing, Nixon hoped to play the two Communist powers against one another in an attempt to permit a graceful American exit from Vietnam. In the meantime, his warming with China put additional pressure on the Soviets, who had by this time reached parity in strategic weapons stockpiles with the United States. Early in his presidency, Nixon had announced the development of a new anti-ballistic missile program in response to the growing Soviet arsenal.xli With these factors in play, the Soviets had no choice but to sit down at the table and resume talks regarding arms reduction: the SALT I agreement was signed in 1972, and with it came an underlying principle of the détente process that would characterize Nixon’s administration: that neither side would attempt to take a unilateral advantage over the other.xlii Curiously, Nixon proceeded to do just this, and he moved to press his advantages with his relations with China and Iran, among other states, to secure an advantage for the United States while maintaining an atmosphere of cooperation with the Soviets. The steps had been made in the right direction, though, towards developing mutual trust, and the foundation was laid for a further reduction in tensions between the two superpowers.
Ultimately, the Prague Spring and ensuing Soviet intervention did nothing to change the status quo in Europe, but the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 did much to give momentum to the détente process and to influence the course of the Cold War in the following decade. While both superpowers were receptive to negotiations prior to the Soviet invasion, the Soviets were more hesitant than the Americans to commit to serious talks. The loss of prestige that the Soviets suffered as a result of their aggressive attempt to roll back liberal reforms in their sphere of influence had a major impact on their ability to negotiate from an advantageous position. By 1970, a new administration was in power in Washington, and its priority was withdrawal from the conflict in Vietnam. American prestige had been wounded by the Vietnam conflict, but Nixon’s administration had fresh political capital to play with and Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik to guide policy. With these assets, Nixon was able to position the United States in a way that made the Soviets, already suffering from loss of influence in the third world and teetering on shaky ground in their own backyard, unable to refuse rapprochement with America. The newly minted Brezhnev Doctrine, retroactively applied to Hungary 1956, was built on lies and bluffs: the Soviets could not possibly afford to invade another one of their satellites, especially within what was supposed to be their inner ring of buffer states. While their military might had reached both conventional and strategic parity with the United States, the Soviets were unable to exercise that might without risking either an all-out war or a dramatic disintegration of their bloc. Soviet relations with the Chinese were also crumbling, and were made worse by their invasion of Czechoslovakia. With the loss of their largest land border as a friend, the Soviets had little choice but to warm up to the West or risk economic repercussions in response to their aggressive containment policy. Brezhnev, in 1972, went on to give credit to his invasion of Czechoslovakia: “Without [the invasion of] Czechoslovakia – there would have been no Brandt in Germany, no Nixon in Moscow, no détente.”xliii While his reasoning for giving credit to the intervention was more an exoneration of himself as the executioner of Czechoslovakia rather than a public acknowledgment of a weakened Soviet position, his assertion was true. The Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia was a calculated risk by the Kremlin to stem the tide against the disintegration of their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe; while they were successful in containing the spillover into their other satellites and border territories, the Soviets expended immense political capital and sacrificed a large amount of prestige to do so. The new administration in Washington, under the direction of Nixon and Kissinger, pounced at the opportunity to press their advantage and to create a new balance of power in the Cold War.
i Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 193-95
ii Ibid. 200
iii John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 144
iv Ibid. 149
v Ibid. 153
vi Ibid. 133
vii Ibid.
viii Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism, 9th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 206
ix Ibid. 221-23
x Zubok 200
xi Ibid.
xii Harold Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 10
xiii Ibid. 11
xiv Zbyněk Zeman, Prague Spring (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 13
xv Philip Bergmann, Self Determination: The case of Czechoslovakia 1968-1969 (Lugano-Bellinzona: Istituto Editoriale Ticinese, 1972), 19
xvi Ibid. 20
xvii Ibid. 21-22
xviii Skilling 221
xix Ibid. 225
xx Telegram From the DoS to the Embassy in Czechoslovakia: 13 February 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d55>
xxi Memorandum of Conversation between Dr. Karel Duda and Mr. Walter J. Stoessel: 21 March 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d56>
xxii Telegram from the Embassy in Czechoslovakia to the Department of State: 25 March 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d57>
xxiii Memorandum of Conversation between Dr. Karel Duda and Mr. Walter J. Stoessel: 21 March 1968
xxiv Harry Schwartz, Prague’s 200 Days (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 142
xxv Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State: 11 July 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d65>
xxvi Memorandum of Conversation between Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Deputy Under Secretary Charles E. Bohlen <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d70>
xxvii Zubok 208
xxviii Notes of Emergency Meeting of the National Security Council: 20 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d81>
xxix Summary of Meeting between President Johnson, Anatoliy Dobrynin, and Walt Rostow: 20 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d80>
xxx Notes of Emergency Meeting of the National Security Council: 20 August 1968
xxxi Statement by President Johnson on Czechoslovakia: 21 August 1968 <http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/19/1968-08-21g.pdf>
xxxii Bergmann 34
xxxiii Schwartz 212-13
xxxiv Gaddis 150
xxxv Summary of Meeting of Johnson Cabinet: 23 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d85>
xxxvi Gaddis 153
xxxvii Zubok 209
xxxviii Gaddis 153
xxxix Ibid.
xl Gaddis 151
xli Ambrose 230
xlii Ibid. 231-32
xliii Zubok 209
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